Pretoria - The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, was on Wednesday forced to adjourn for a few minutes as the late footballer Senzo Meyiwa’s long-time friend, Mthokozisi Thwala, recounted how police tortured him, with his hands and legs bound together with a rope used for slaughtering cows.
He broke down as he recalled that he “peed” on a mat during an ordeal that lasted at least three to four hours while police forced him to admit he killed Meyiwa.
Thwala started testifying about Meyiwa’s last moments before his death, saying his friend was still alive when he was rushed to hospital after being shot at his musician girlfriend Kelly Khumalo’s home in Vosloorus.
Five men – Bongani Ntanzi, Sifisokuhle Ntuli, Muzikawukhulelwa Sthemba Sibiya, Mthobisi Prince Ncube and Mthokoziseni Ziphozonke Maphisa – are on trial facing premeditated murder and attempted murder charges.
Thwala testified a gunshot went off during a scuffle that broke out between one of the intruders and Kelly’s sister, Zandile and her mother in the kitchen.
Both Zandile and her mom, he said, assaulted an armed intruder with the crutches belonging to Tumelo Madlala – Meyiwa’s childhood friend.
Others inside the house were music producer Sello Chico Twala’s son, Longwe, and Kelly’s two children.
On October 26, 2014, Meyiwa was gunned down by one of the intruders after a gunshot suddenly went off, forcing Thwala and others to run for cover. They later discovered Meyiwa was shot.
Thwala conceded to not seeing the person who pulled the trigger, but he said there was only one person with a firearm. He said he ran out of the house using a kitchen door after a shot went off. One of the intruders “who looked tall” and armed with an object like a knife, chased after him.
Thwala escaped by jumping into the neighbour’s yard. The intruder continued straight down the road. He told the court he “might” have heard a second gunshot while fleeing the scene.
Together with neighbours, they returned to the scene, finding Meyiwa lying on the kitchen floor. Thwala removed Meyiwa’s white T-shirt and noticed a bullet wound in his chest.
“I saw a hole (on his chest area),” he said. Someone provided a towel to put on Meyiwa’s bleeding wound. At the time, he said, Meyiwa was “still alive because he was still gasping” for air. He was rushed to a hospital in an X6 BMW driven by Kelly, with Zandi, Tumelo and Longwe Twala in her company. En route to the hospital Meyiwa was struggling to breathe and speak.
“I said to him he needs to think of his children. I could tell that his breathing was now going down,” he said.
On arrival at the hospital Thwala remained with Meyiwa in the car while the others asked for help from nurses.
“I tried to speak to him and he was not responding much,” Thwala said.
Nurses rushed him inside the hospital, where they performed surgery.
After a short while the nurses came out and broke the news to Kelly’s mom that Meyiwa was dead. “I ran into that room. I saw a nurse covering him (with a sheet). I opened him, but a nurse covered him again. There was an instance when I was shaking him but a nurse told me to leave him,” he testified.
Later on, Meyiwa’s wife Mandisa and fellow Orlando Pirates team players showed up at the hospital. They were said to be from a birthday party of one of the team’s players, Rooi Mahamutsa.
The place, Thwala said, was packed with media people and others from a local chisanyama. Mandisa and Kelly comforted each other. Thwala testified that Kelly later got into a heated argument with other women, but that Mandisa was not part of the quarrel.
Kelly refused to hand over Meyiwa’s ID to him later, despite a request by the deceased’s family, he said. However, she subsequently handed over the ID to one of Meyiwa’s relatives who arrived with the police and Thwala at Kelly and Senzo’s residence in Mulbarton.
The family wanted the ID to facilitate the removal of Senzo’s corpse from the government mortuary to a private one.
They also wanted Meyiwa’s belongings to be taken home to KwaZulu-Natal, but Kelly refused, saying it would be “Senzo himself who would tell her in a dream what to do regarding his clothes”.
Thwala testified those present during the shooting attended an identity parade at Jeppe police station on October, 29, 2014. “I didn’t identify anyone,” he said.
He got emotional as he told court how he suffered torture at the hands of the police in 2019. He said police tied his hands together with his legs using a rope used for slaughtering cows.
That was in January 2019 with investigating officer, Colonel Joyce Buthelezi, who headed a team on docket 375 implicating house occupants in Meyiwa’s murder. Thwala said Buthelezi and another officer known as Makhubo came unannounced to fetch him from his home in uMlazi. The police came under the pretext that they were taking him for an identity parade in Johannesburg, he said, but drove him to Pretoria, where they went into a building that has a tunnel and stairs to Buthelezi’s office.
At some stage Buthelezi left him alone in the office and two men entered to assault him, he testified. He was beaten with open hands for at least an hour. One of the men went out and came back with a bag from which he took out a “tube”.
The tube, he said, was used to suffocate him by closing his mouth and nose at the same time. He broke down as he told the court how the men tied his hands behind his back and also his feet. “They then tied my hands and feet together and my private part was exposed on to the mat,” he said. The mentook turns in assaulting him.
“I couldn’t breathe and I thought I would die there. They were taking turns for a good three to four hours.”
Pretoria News